1 rule/1 mod tweak to help Admins!

[tced 45]

As a server Admin & part of 4 man group renting a server for $50 a month, I have a few request to present to hopefully help other Admins alike to combat hacker issues.

Let me say that I do not place blame for hackers on DayZ, in fact, I believe that this mod will be the best help in the long term for combating hackers in the future as it puts presser on BIS/BatEye to pick up the pace & get better on their end.

Yet, there are some things that I believe DayZ can do, that will help in the mean time.

Server Rule change...

Allow servers to password.

Have ppl who want to play on a locked server join the group who's hosting/renting via their web site. This will give a greatly increased way of screening out hackers & form a better community on that server. Would also max out the server on a continual basis if players feel they are safer from constant/random hacks. I mean, imagine if ppl saw an add/promo for a site that was locked for a more secure game play environment, those who are looking for that would flock to those sites/servers.

Of course hackers may/will also join, but in a more controlled environment, they would be detected & banned more quickly. Think about it like this, ppl join your site to play on your server, you post in the forums that if there is a teleport hack that everyone holds fire, anyone who kills another immediately after they were teleported will be banned from the server. So even if a hacker got on your server & does this, it would be much easier to find out who or detour them from using as it wouldn't give them the kills they would normally get. Ether way, the probability of the hack is greatly reduced & the probability of finding the hacker greatly increased.

Mod tweak...

Put the who killed who text back up.

This is one of the single most needed fixes in the mod currently for combating hackers. Not knowing who it was that killed all those ppl that just got teleported is very much in favor of the hacker. There is no way to know who that is, especially with name plates turned off, the hacker has complete protection from detection that is built into the mod itself. To be honest I'm not even sure why this was disabled in recent patches. Turning this off... always benefits the hacker & is would be a very good help to server Admins.

These two suggestion are key to helping us Admins manage the servers we are over & while there is abuse by Admins just like hackers, the legit server admins/sites are the ones paying the price as it were, while the hackers & cheaters go free. Making changes along these lines would help to ensure that we continue renting the server we have, atm... growing support among our members grows thinner & thinner with each attack we encounter, hence my post & request. I do hope that DayZ takes a look at this post & will make changes in the future that support the Admins of servers that host their mod.

Edited July 29, 2012 by TCEd

[carcher7878 6]

yes bring back the who killed who. "joemommawithguns killed bob"

2 seconds later

joemommawithguns killed bob's cousin

joemommawithguns killed jake

joemommawithguns killed pedo bear

joemommawithguns killed admin Dave

joemommawithguns was Banned

either joemommawithguns has skills to kill people across an entire map, or he is a hack.

Bring it back!

[dazbobaby 6]

Good idea but personally I think you're pissing into the wind.

[gerow1337@hotmail.com 27]

LoL every admin on a dayz server just wants to lock there server to farm story sabor/nwaf with out being rolled.

[tim0o 7]

disagree with the locking server, but agree with the player kills on screen - itll make identifying hackers SO much easier. maybe even adapt server logs to record GUIDs alongside player names if possible?

[breadwinka 3]

Locking server I do not agree with at all farm gear derp herp. But the saying who killed who needs to come back, On my server one of my friends died to a hacker spawned a truck on him and teleported around, Luckily I was able to find his GUID and server ban him but showing the kill message just in server logs would be great.

[ArchAngel-7- 45]

Anyone who is not renting a server/has a server will disagree with the locks. Those who are renting or part of a group will agree to password/locks. I think everyone should agree with the who killed who thingy. Admins have to understand that there are no public servers. Players need to understand what admins have put up with. Admins think they should have the right to password/lock their private server because, well, its PRIVATE and they pay for it. Players think they have the right to play the game, which they do. Admins need to realize that until this game is no longer an ALPHA, its gonna continue to have the communist type rules to ensure that everyone can play the game as fairly as possible. Players need to realize that Admins are players too but, they pay to play, unlike players. There are going to be so many copy cat games coming out soon that will be very similar to this game. They WILL have private and public servers. Which means Admins will have the right to password/lock their server.

Those who are not Admins, need to educate themselves about what Admins can/cannot do. Which is pretty much just stop/start the server. That is very frustrating because in every other game, they have the right to lock/password their server. Not every Admin wants to "FARM" the server. If you ask me, certain people, whether they are Admins or not, want to farm the server. Just because Admins have the power to lock/password their server, does not mean they want to Farm the server! If there were no people who were willing to pay for a server, only to have no rights to it, than NOONE would be playing DayZ. I get sick and tired of people complaining to me that "Your server went down!!!! I am Reporting you. You have to keep it up!!!. Oh really, well, how the hell can I update the thing or FTP to check logs if its up???? I am going to get you in trouble." I got kicked from your server cause " My ping is too high". "I am telling on you and I hate you!" Sorry dude but if you find a server that has a ping of 350ms and you connect to play on that server, you are lost.

Or on this forum, "All Admins are jerks, these assholes pay so I can play and they want to be able to control their servers. Who the hell do they think they are." "These Admins just need to shut-up and and make sure that I can play." This is how it sounds to me when I read the posts in this forum. Or when players tell me I need to make sure not to upset them or they are going to tell their congressman.

I run one of the many thousands of servers, and I never lock it. I have configured battleye to auto-kick anyone with a ping over 100ms. And thats about it. I stop the server when I need to update or if something is wrong. I start it after updating or checking logs. Yet I still get crap from players about every little thing. My E-mail address is in the MOTD. Every other day, I get an Email from some twirp about how I shutdown the server because he found a vehicle, or found a gun, or shot someone. People I have no idea what the hell your doing in the game! And stop telling Admins what to do! Cause if you are not a member of the DayZ Dev Team or the Provider I rent my server from. I don't care what you say.

[kahshim@live.ca 4]

I definitely want the who killed who back in to see who may be hacking.

[tced 45]

LoL every admin on a dayz server just wants to lock there server to farm story sabor/nwaf with out being rolled.

I said in my OP that there is Admin abuse out there, but think about what you posted... "the Admin locks the server so he can farm"... for what, the server is locked, you can't take vehicles to other servers... what good would it do you lock a server just so you can waist time farming loot when your the only person on the server??? Not to mentioned that your lumping all Admins into one pile... as hackers themselves, which again is not the case.

My point in locked or pass-wording is to allow players to go through a screening process via the Admin/renter's web site or forums. This by itself would cut down on hackers in general as most of them wouldn't join the group to begin with. And again it would allow for better detection on the server if you knew, to some degree, who the players are on your server. They would be able to read your forums & follow specific guidelines such as the one I posted in the OP about not firing should something like a teleport hack happened. Players who want nothing to do with hacking/hackers would fill those servers 10 times faster than those open to possible attack at any moment.

I'm not talking about creating a server that ppl can't join, anyone can still join, but they would need to go through joining a specific community & become part of that community & following the rules laid out on that server, such as what to do should a hacker get in & hack the server. It would also help reduce combat surfing from players outside of said community.

Once again, we need to widen our focus here & look at this with bigger eyes, hackers do not care about the success of the mod, the servers, the communities & especially the hassles we Admins have to go through, they only care about themselves. I want the mod to be successful now... not later on & these request are not so far over the line, they are needed imo.

[humbleuk 76]

The scripts don't even register under their names, so bringing kill texts back is no good for anything at all.

You should read up on arma scripts and the mod scene and see exactly why it's hard to track scripters down.

Edited July 30, 2012 by MessHall

[tced 45]

The scripts don't even register under their names, so bringing kill texts back is no good for anything at all.

You should read up on arma scripts and the mod scene and see exactly why it's hard to track scripters down.

Who said anything about scripts registering under names? Also, I know it's hard to track scripters/hackers, but you don't need that info to deal with the issue, yes it would be awesome for the hackers script to show up under his name, heck we could ban ppl in the lobby if that were the case. We only have what we currently have to use & giving us back the "who killed who" text, ether after you die or on screen for all to see, would greatly help in detecting hackers.

Edited July 30, 2012 by TCEd

[melted349 43]

I think it could be helpful if who killed who was logged, but not displayed in game for all to see. In the event a hacker hops on and kills everyone in the server, well the log is gonna read something like:

12:01:39: hacker killed player1

12:01:39: hacker killed player2

12:01:39: hacker killed player3

12:01:39: hacker killed player4

12:01:39: hacker killed player5

12:01:39: hacker killed player6

12:01:39: hacker killed player7

12:01:39: hacker killed player8

12:01:39: hacker killed player9

12:01:39: hacker killed player10

12:01:39: hacker killed player11

12:01:39: hacker killed player12

12:01:39: hacker killed player13

12:01:39: hacker killed player14

12:01:39: hacker killed player15

12:01:39: hacker killed player16

12:01:39: hacker killed player17

12:01:39: hacker killed player18

12:01:39: hacker killed player19

12:01:39: hacker killed player20

12:01:39: hacker killed player21

12:01:39: hacker killed player22

12:01:40: hacker killed player23

12:01:40: hacker killed player24

12:01:40: hacker killed player25

12:01:40: hacker killed player26

12:01:40: hacker killed player27

And the admin can use simple logic: "Oh player hacker killed 27 players in 2 seconds... hmm..."

Logs are good, I like logs.

[humbleuk 76]

Who said anything about scripts registering under names? Also, I know it's hard to track scripters/hackers, but you don't need that info to deal with the issue, yes it would be awesome for the hackers script to show up under his name, heck we could ban ppl in the lobby if that were the case. We only have what we currently have to use & giving us back the "who killed who" text, ether after you die or on screen for all to see, would greatly help in detecting hackers.

Maybe you should read my post again.

When certain scripts are run to kill you it's not registered as "hacker killed player" -- if it was that easy, things would be very different.

Infact the hackers/scripters can run the scripts under other peoples names aswell, so innocent people could be caught up in it.

Arma 2 engine is quite dumb overall and it is easily fooled if you know anything at all about the game itself and not just "dayz", you'd walk circles around it, until the engine is fixed, something new in scripts will be used to get around the hotfixes...it's not hard at all.

Edited July 30, 2012 by MessHall

[tced 45]

Maybe you should read my post again.

When certain scripts are run to kill you it's not registered as "hacker killed player" -- if it was that easy, things would be very different.

Infact the hackers/scripters can run the scripts under other peoples names aswell, so innocent people could be caught up in it.

Arma 2 engine is quite dumb overall and it is easily fooled if you know anything at all about the game itself and not just "dayz", you'd walk circles around it, until the engine is fixed, something new in scripts will be used to get around the hotfixes...it's not hard at all.

So your saying we should just sit on our hands & do nothing? You also say that hackers can run their scripts under other players name... I thought you couldn't detect scripts under ppl's name, so how would it be a problem for someone who was innocent? You seem to be running in a circle.

I do like melted349 idea, set it up so the logs record the kills, that way we can check them for actual data that pertains to abuse & hacking.

Edited July 30, 2012 by TCEd

[humbleuk 76]

So your saying we should just sit on our hands & do nothing? You also say that hackers can run their scripts under other players name... I thought you couldn't detect scripts under ppl's name, so how would it be a problem for someone who was innocent? You seem to be running in a circle.

I do like melted349 idea, set it up so the logs record the kills, that way we can check them for actual data that pertains to abuse & hacking.

It just depends on how well they have scripted, most scripters are copy n paste noobs and get banned anyway, but the real scripters who are usually modders of arma or use somesort of mod app, will sit in your server and make sure innocent people are the ones to get blamed.

Most mod-apps these days are invisible to logs, battleeye and any script detections, so either way, you're all fucked.

You simply are not going to catch hacker killed player A,B,C,D etc etc.. in a log... after they just teleported you all to the sky.#

melted idea is great! but it's not going to work.

Please have a read up on arma 2 modding and you'll see why, to many scripts can be used to do practically anything you want.

Edited July 31, 2012 by MessHall

[tced 45]

Follow the bouncing ball boys & girls as it goes around in a circle..

if scripters can do anything they want, can they detect hackers? or is that the only thing they can't do which would mean they can't do everything, seems that if you can hack a server & kill ppl without them knowing, couldn't you also detect hackers without them knowing??

You seem to stop short of giving anything positive what so ever, instead you only state just how invincible hackers are. If it is true what you say, then can't a hacker hack the hackers, if he can do anything he wants?

Edited July 31, 2012 by TCEd

[humbleuk 76]

Of course you can detect the hackers with various scripts, infact rocket had a code scanning certain things at one point, but it is massive problem for performance.

If you are not willing to learn about arma scripts and why arma suffers so bad at whats happening, please stop making suggestions that have been suggested 2-3 years ago already.

In relation to the thread though, what you orginally asked will not work.

sorry.

Edited August 1, 2012 by MessHall

[cleveden8 64]

+1 for displaying kills on screen.

[Squiffy101 1]

As a server renter and one of a group of 4 renting it, I would like to have a heads up on impossible kill rates which happened on the very first night we logged onto our server. Everyone just died! I still don't have a clue where to look for the names/detect hacker info on the server....when I get some time, I will trawl the net for info unless someone would be kind enough to post a link to somewhere that I can start :-)

None of the 4 want to lock the server, the biggest thrill of this game for us is working as a team and not knowing if walking out of the supermarket at Brezi we're going to get blown away or meet a friendly survivor. (As yet, I've only met one friendly which was my very first session...he didn't speak, just looked at me when I walked into an outbuilding at Sol and didn't take my head off with his axe because it was obvious I was unarmed cos of the flashlight in my hand!)

Would I really would like to see is the ability to reserve slots though. The age old argument that because we're paying for it should allow us this tiny perk has been stated many times before and I do agree, but we are happy to provide a server for the playing community without wanting to hoard resources/rule over players.

[machiofolo@yahoo.com 5]

I support knowing who killed who... would help tremendously with identfying hackers.

Regarding server passwords, I am not in favor. However, I would support reserving slots for family, friends and anyone helping financially to rent a server.

[tced 45]

Of course you can detect the hackers with various scripts, infact rocket had a code scanning certain things at one point, but it is massive problem for performance.

If you are not willing to learn about arma scripts and why arma suffers so bad at whats happening, please stop making suggestions that have been suggested 2-3 years ago already.

In relation to the thread though, what you orginally asked will not work.

sorry.

Rgr that mate, I agree it's a huge problem, as for my original request... pswd servers (have ppl join through host website) & who killed who text... those can work, if the rules allow the first one & Rocket puts the text back up for the second. I also understand that some ppl may be banned for the wrong reasons, such as something you mentioned, which we plan to manage through our forums, but at the least we could begin working on removing those that are blatant...

[D3AD_S1L3NT 13]

No on lock yes on who killed who.

simple

~silent